BATMAN and NIGHTWING

New friend and “mike’s collection” reader Paul Boudreau recently shared pics of his collection with me. He has a nice collection of bootleg Star Wars toys. I have a few boot legs in my collection but it never occurred to me to actually seek them out. Bootlegs as you might imagine are knock-offs of popular toys usually from foreign countries and of much cheaper quality. I decided that now would be a good time to write about the best (worst) boot leg toys in my collection. If you want crappy knock-offs of anything there’s no better place to turn than Mexico. I just so happen to have a best buddy who heralds from Mexico and on one of his recent trips home to visit his family he asked me if I wanted anything. Everyone else of course wanted cheap tequila but not me, get me some crap-tacular Mexican action figures. Miguel came through big time on that request as I cannot imagine a crappier pair of figures than these two. Like, come on Mexico. Are you even trying? This package contains two figures in some crappy shrink wrap with a cardboard header. The header says “Super Heroes” and features Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Spider-Man and I think Aquaman. It’s kind of hard to tell as they got the colors right on everyone except for the non-descript blonde guy on the far right. Aqua man should be rocking an orange shirt but this guy ironically enough is wearing a more aqua colored shirt. The cardboard piece placed behind the figures to give the package it’s shape is solid white, that is until you turn it around and realize it’s actually comprised of some Oral-B dental floss packaging.

The figures themselves are of Batman and Nightwing. Batman actually looks remarkably like he’s supposed to. He’s clad in black from head to toe save for a gold colored belt and batish symbol on his chest. He has some flesh colored paint slapped on his face as well to showcase that famous square jaw of his. Nightwing doesn’t fare so well. The Mexicans probably didn’t know who he was so just went with whatever color they could find. Instead of a nice dark blue, Nightwing is treated to some lime green tights with gold accents. Where this figure really shines is in the face. A glob of flesh colored paint was slapped on leaving green poking through all over the place like he’s the worst dressed “V” alien ever. He has some black for the hair and then another thick black line over his eyes. Nightwing does wear a domino mask just like he used to when he was the more recognizable Robin but instead of painting the clearly sculpted mask and leaving eyeholes, the gringo who painted this figure decided Nightwing would be better served with a Geordi LaForge visor. And then both figures are inexplicable given gigantic shiny wings. You could try and convince me that these are capes but the veiny-ness leads me to believe otherwise. I could score these guys highly in a hipster ironic way but I think I’ll score these guys as if I was a kid who just opened them up for Christmas. 0 out of 10. Shoulda went with the tequila.

I thought about getting into the Funskool produced Joe knock-offs a while back as some of their re-paints were actually pretty cool but I decided to focus on the real deal. I recently bought a Predaking transformer knock-off for like $20 instead of paying $300 for the original.

I don’t discriminate when it comes to toys. Real, bootleg, knockoff. They all appeal to my inner hoarder. Mexican boots and knockoffs are a particular love for me. It’s the price some of them go for that keeps me from drowing in them though. Maybe that’s a good thing??